Researchers from the U.S. academic community, including NCAR and the University of Wyoming, use the computing, visualization, and archiving resources at the NWSC.

The majority of users access the facility’s resources remotely via the Internet from desktop or laptop computers.

Yellowstone Supercomputer

The NWSC's inaugural supercomputer, Yellowstone, was installed in 2012. It includes a cluster of high-performance supercomputing processors, a massive data archiving facility, and a special system for visualizing scientific data.

In addition to Yellowstone, a smaller system, dubbed Erebus, shares the supercomputing floor. Its two racks are dedicated to the highly specialized weather forecasting required to support Antarctic science, using the NCAR-based Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System.

Yellowstone's computing power, compared to...

NCAR was the first customer for the Cray 1A, which supported computational science at the center from 1977 to 1989 Compared to that early supercomputer, the Yellowstone system provides:

9.7 million times the computational rate

3.4 million times the disk capacity

19 million times the central memory size

One petaflops is one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) floating point operations per second, which is approximately 143,000 calculations per second for every man, woman, and child on Earth.

At 1.5 petaflops, Yellowstone will be capable of more than 214,500 calculations per second for every person on Earth.

To get Yellowstone's power and speed from a set of computers like the ones we use at work or at home, you would need to link 40,000 state-of-the-art laptop or desktop computers together and allow each one to exchange data with any other one at 12 gigabytes per second. That speed would let you read the entire contents of a laptop’s 1 terabyte disk drive in under 1.5 minutes.

Benefits to Society

The research conducted on Yellowstone will lead to improved understanding of many processes, including:

Tornadoes and other dangerous weather events

Geomagnetic storms that affect communications systems and power grids

Water issues, from future snowpack and water availability to drought and flood behavior

Earthquakes and tsunamis

Sources and global dispersal patterns of air pollution

Subsurface water and energy resources

Potential subsurface reservoirs for carbon sequestration

Wildfire dynamics

Effects of wind extremes on wind turbines and of clouds on solar cells

The NWSC is operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It is owned by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The facility was designed with a total capacity of 4 to 5 megawatts of electricity, but with Yellowstone now in production, usage is considerably lower. Total power for computing, cooling, office, and support functions has averaged 1.8 to 2.1 MW.

Award Recognition

2013 Green Data Center of the Year

The NWSC received top honors from Datacenter Dynamics in this category, which recognizes those organizations that "have seen increasing pressures of power costs, regulation, community and environmental responsibility as an opportunity rather than a problem and have demonstrated their vision of sustainability as a critical driver in the design and operation of their data facilities."

2013 Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Award

The facility has been awarded first place in the “Facility Design Implementation” category for its sustainable approach in designing and building the NWSC. The Facility Design Implementation Award recognizes cutting-edge data center projects that demonstrate energy and resource efficiency in a new, operational data center.

LEED Gold status

The NWSC facility has achieved LEED Gold status. LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is an internationally recognized rating system for green buildings developed by the U.S. Green Building Council for evaluating environmentally sustainable construction.

Partner Contributions

Funding from NSF to UCAR, NCAR’s managing organization, is $57.6 million. UCAR will operate and maintain the supercomputing center under NSF sponsorship.

The State of Wyoming, through the Wyoming Business Council, has provided $20 million for construction costs.

UW will provide $1 million annually for 20 years for ongoing upgrades to computing equipment and data storage.

Cheyenne LEADS administered $4.5 million of Wyoming Business Council Business Ready Community Funds for site infrastructure. This included development of a fiber optic network, road development to the site, an extension of water and sewer lines, and regional drainage, landscaping, and signage.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.